


Story for Pearl

by bramblecircuit



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Autistic Pearl, F/F, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 23:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4156443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblecircuit/pseuds/bramblecircuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Rose.</em> <br/><em>I didn't want to do any of this without you.</em></p>
<p>After Steven finds a tape with Pearl’s name on it, Pearl attempts to reconcile with her feelings for Rose, but there’s something out there tampering with the memories of Beach City. As Pearl learns more than she bargained for, she has to decide if she really knew everything about Rose—and if it makes a difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Her Voice

Pearl hummed to herself as she folded the last of the laundry. The socks were bundled together, sorted by color; Steven's jeans were stacked according to the damage at the knees. Just the shirts, and the room would be back to its natural, pristine condition. 

"Pearl! Hey, Pearl!" 

The slam of the cottage door jolted Pearl out of her reverie. She hugged Steven's shirt to her chest to keep her hands from trembling. While she knew loud noises were just a part of everyday life, they still startled her with ease, crawling inside her barriers and shaking just enough stones loose to make the whole fortress crumble.  
"I found something for you!" He walked up to her proudly, his hands holding tight to something behind his back.

"And what might that be, Steven?" She caught a glimpse of Lion stretching in the sun on the porch and ran through the possibilities. More than likely, it was an artifact he'd been momentarily fascinated with. He'd done a good job lately of bringing the magical things to the safety of the gems—after he'd tested them out as weapons, of course. No number of scrapes and near-mishaps could dull Steven's adventurous, consequence-free attitude. 

"It's a tape! Like the one Mom left me." Pearl swallowed and clenched her hands around the fabric at the sight of it. The tape sat nestled in a plastic case, barren except for the sticker marking it " _for Pearl_." 

"When I got my tape, I went to find Sadie. We can go there now!" He stopped and looked up, unblinking, at Pearl's stunned expression. "Pearl?"

She steadied herself.

"Yes, of course, Steven. This is something..." She trailed off. _Something impossibly precious._

"I mean, you want to watch it, right?" Pearl swallowed again and tried to compose her thoughts into something manageable. 

"Yes. It just might...disturb my memory of her." She straightened up. "But Rose would want me to watch it! That's why my name is on it," she reasoned, mostly to herself, as Steven bounced on his heels. She took his hand. 

 

Steven chattered away on their walk to the Big Donut. 

"...and Sadie's really strong and fast. She made a spear and caught fish with it, and then she caught the gem, the one I put with the others! Hey, if she could fuse with a gem, maybe you or Garnet, she'd be able to do so much..." Pearl passed her eyes over the townspeople. They were all hurrying after some goal in their lives, messily, inefficiently. Rose would call it beautiful.

In all honesty, it had been a while since Pearl had considered with Rose might think of the world they live in—or of her, for that matter.

Pearl tended to dance with her memories of Rose instead of engaging them. She sidestepped them with surprising elegance, but just as she might tip backwards into the arms of their comfort, the facade shattered. 

It still hurt too much; the other gems had given her space, and she had taken her time to grieve, but it wasn't as if she'd come out of it any stronger. She'd led the others to believe that she'd made peace with Rose's decision, but mostly she’d redesigned her outfit, organized her room, practiced drawing her swords and slicing, slashing, stabbing—

In the eternity of her lifespan, it had been barely any time since Rose's death, but it rung with the solemnity of a church's bell. No amount of experience could make the damage ache any less.

And this...

She stopped in front of the shop's door. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this could be dangerous. 

"Peaaaarl! Have you _even_ been _listening_?" He gave her a half-hearted pout. "I think I'm really onto something!"

"I'm sure you are, Steven," she replied, tacking a smile she hoped looked natural on the end of her words. "Now, where's this…TV you speak of?"

 

After they'd gotten set up, Sadie closed the door behind her. 

"We'll give you some space, OK?" she called from crack in the doorway. Pearl nodded her thanks and stood motionless with the tape in her hands. When the door closed fully, the stillness of the room settled around her like dust. She listened to the pattern of her breathing until it quieted and pushed the tape into the VCR player.

The TV flickered with static before showing the beach just outside the temple’s doorstep.

"Pearl."

She'd forgotten to sit down, Pearl realized as emotions flew over her in a panic. The chairs seemed too far away now; best to just kneel in front of the screen. It wasn't like she'd forgotten how Rose's voice sounded, but to hear her say her name as though they were both still here—

A pale blush rose in her cheeks. She stretched out her hand.

"I can understand if you're mad at me, still."

"No!" Pearl bit her lip as the tears began to fall. "No, Rose, never!" The soft rhythm of the waves beat a steady presence behind Rose's voice.

"I'm not here to tell you to move on. That would be cruel."

The tears came faster then, a soft laugh escaping her lips at her relief. She pressed her palms on the cool floor to steady herself, the sobs shaking her like wind through grass. 

"Good, because I could never—"

"But I need to make sure you're taking care of yourself," Rose added sternly. Pearl looked up at the screen, swallowed.

"You should find a journal in the case with the tape." Pearl scrambled to pull herself up, to find it. There it was! The pale pink cover featured a star at the heart of the glossy sheen. She flipped through it, hoping for some of Rose's handwriting, but the light blue pages stared back at her, empty.

"Write to me, Pearl. Get out everything you need to say. The gems here will need you, as you will always be quick to admit, but you have your own life, too." Rose sighed and moved the camera closer to the water. 

"Your life is _miraculous_ , Pearl. No one but you gets to live it. You were always so keen on throwing it away for me—let me know you've learned in my absence." 

Pearl wiped away the last of her tears, careful to keep the water from staining the pages. The machine shuddered, signaling the tape was almost out of time.

“I love you, Pearl.” Pearl pressed her hand to her cheek and sighed, pretending—just for a moment—that it was Rose’s touch. Those were words she’d never dreamed of hearing again. 

“And I wouldn’t ask more of you than you could handle.”

The image flickered once before going dark. Pearl wasted no time in stashing the tape back in its case and straightening the TV. The quick movements helped her plan: she’d base the journal around locations, memories—the very same patch of sand in the video would do nicely for a start.

Pearl couldn't stop herself from organizing the rest of the room. Steven's friends certainly were _messy_ , she thought to herself, but the criticism faded just as quickly as it had come. _Better them than me_ , she concluded on her way back home.

 

The beach sounded different in person, more rough and tumble than in the video. Pearl perched herself in the pinkish sand and flipped to the first full spread of paper.

_Dear Rose_ , she began. She placed the pen on her lips for a moment, thinking, then crossed it out.

_Rose._

_I didn't want to do any of this without you._

The writing came more easily than she expected. She felt almost as if she were talking to Rose, pacing around her room and unleashing a stream of worry as her closest friend sat, constant and sympathetic at the edge of a water pillar. She was serene like that, stemming the flow of Pearl's thoughts with a touch of her hand, a word. Her voice carried a gentle power that embraced its unique strength. 

Pearl sighed and put the pen down. It had been a long time since she'd heard that voice. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure it—and then it was there.

"You know how gems are. Underneath all that magic, they're like humans, volatile and emotional." Pearl set the notebook down and stood up, blood rushing to her head. The voice was unmistakably Rose's. She gasped, a flush spreading over her cheeks. Of course Rose wouldn't just give her a notebook; she'd have something planned, something brilliant and magical and deserving of the time they'd spent together.

"Amethyst can get so rowdy! I love that about her...sometimes." Pearl held her hand to her mouth to stifle her laugh, warmth spreading from her chest to the tips of her fingers.

"Oh, Rose, you always understood us so well..."

"And sometimes it's hard to know what Garnet is thinking. I don't know if what I'm saying will help or just make her feel worse. And Pearl—"

Pearl inched closer to the sound, her smile so big and painful she felt it might engrave itself into her face.

"—sometimes I worry she's too black-and-white for her own good." 

Pearl stopped. 

"It's all or nothing with her, and while I have her all..." She paused. "Sometimes I don't know if I can handle it." 

Pearl resisted the temptation to drop to her knees and bit her lip to keep the tears in. Could Rose have really left such a painful memory for _her_? After the evenings spent crying into her shoulder, the admittance that Rose was the only gem she could ever truly open up to...and she didn't want it? 

Pearl stood up straighter. Rose would _never_ do a thing like this. She’d carried Pearl's trust in the cradle of her hands and she never let it fall, not once. Pearl walked closer to the sound, barely noticing the sand sinking into her shoes. As she peered behind the jut of the cliff, she found what she was looking for.

One of the minions she'd seen patching the warp pads to Homeworld was scuttling along the beach, projecting a fragment of memory into the air. Now that she was closer, she could see a hologram, faded images of Rose and Greg sitting by a campfire. 

In a burst of quiet fury, Pearl summoned her spear and charged at the menace. She pierced it, just once, and that was all it took for the hologram to shut down, taking Rose with it in a burst of static. 

 

She scooped the fragments into her arms and found her way back into the house.

"Garnet?" She called, her hands calm enough to knock on her door. "There's...something you need to know about."

_I won't tell them about the journal_ , she reasoned to herself before Garnet appeared. _The matter of real importance is that...thing out there tampering with our memories_. She thought of the image of Rose, tainted by the green tint of the hologram. _Something that’ll be sorry it ever messed with us._


	2. Swords and Shields

Pearl rocked back and forth as Garnet spread the remains of the sphere on the floor. Amethyst picked up a leg and held it between two fingers, squinting.

"Aw, haven't we seen these things before?"

"Yes," Garnet said. "Last time they were connected to Peridot. We have to assume the same for now."

“They can’t stay away from us, can they?” Amethyst leaned back with a groan, her arms folded behind her head. “Can’t blame ‘em, really. We’re _awesome_.”

"Garnet," Pearl asked, a tinge of hesitancy coloring her voice. "You don't think she's...using our memories, do you?" Garnet stopped piecing together the sphere.

"She might be trying to get us to turn on each other," she replied, her voice firm. "The bots could be malfunctioning. Or they could be harnessing power of some kind and tapping into memories by mistake; we don't know." She stood up. "We need to destroy and bubble these robots until we understand what they're here for. For now, we'll set a perimeter." The taller gem pointed at Amethyst.

"Amethyst, you check the geode. I'll take the battlefield. Pearl, you take—"

"The house!" She cut in. "I'll take the house. They could be crawling all over Steven's things, and we can't have that!" She laughed nervously, folding her hands together. 

Garnet gave her a small nod and signaled for Amethyst to go ahead, who did, exiting the house by backflipping onto the warp pad. Pearl shifted and waited for the usual display of concern.

"It must've been hard for you, seeing Rose again like that." Pearl swallowed, the lump in her throat persistent. Garnet put a hand on Pearl's shoulder, and Pearl looked down at the floor, wishing Garnet would get on with the mission and leave her to her own thoughts. It wasn't that she felt the others didn't care; it was more that they didn't _understand_. Sure, it was easy to see the experience was painful, but it was more than that, more layered, and Pearl wasn't sure she could put it into words if she wanted to. Talking could really be a nuisance sometimes.

“I’m here if you want to speak to me,” Garnet added before warping to the battlefield. Pearl winced at the thought of encountering a memory _there_. Best for her to keep Steven safe and organize the closets if the occasion called for it. 

 

She stood alone in the center of the house and dropped her hands to her side. After checking all the temple’s rooms and wiping down the kitchen counter a few times, Pearl had to admit there was nothing here. Deciding the best thing to do was to stay busy, Pearl teleported to the hand overlooking the beach and checked the laundry machines for abandoned socks.

She had a good view of the ocean from up here, the edges of the hill and the lighthouse faintly visible as well. She peered over the edges of the rock, pretending to trace patterns into the sand. If she'd just remembered to bring her journal with her, she could've gotten some writing done, but in the horror of seeing Rose's memory like that, she'd left it...

Where _had_ she left it? She straightened up sharply, its absence growing more and more urgent. What if Amethyst came back and found it? She'd never hear the end of it, writing _love letters_ to someone she couldn't even talk to anymore. She could already hear the edge to Amethyst’s voice as she waved the notebook in the air, crinkling the pages. 

She was just about to teleport back into the house when she saw it: a tiny, lime green sphere rolling along the sand.

Banishing her worry, she leapt from the hand and summoned her weapon, slamming the point into the beach to break her fall. She charged after it. It looked like it was still searching for something. She raised her spear—

A flash of blinding light made her recoil. When she recovered her sight, she saw—

Herself. 

A version of herself that hadn't known heartbreak; a Pearl who could smirk and toss her head because she knew, really, truly _knew_ that Rose was hers to keep. 

She stood, spellbound as she watched the younger Pearl take Rose by the hand. 

"I want to fight for you," the hologram said, her voice shaking with the need to be understood. Pearl put a hand to her chest. She remembered this. She'd just finished her training to rise to knighthood, and she was brimming with urgency, overflowing with a sense of duty that mixed harmoniously with her love. 

The younger Pearl stood on her tiptoes to look into Rose's eyes. She cradled one of the taller gem’s pink curls in her hand, the feel of her hair so soft she closed her eyes. "You are everything I want to protect," Pearl watched herself declare. Rose smiled then, but Pearl noticed a flicker of worry flit across her face.

"You’ll fight _with_ me, not _for_ ," the taller gem corrected, tapping Pearl on her nose. "We could make a great team, my love.”

"Of course!" Pearl replied, summoning her sword and giving the air a slash for good measure. "You’ll heal, and I'll fight."

The hologram flickered and Pearl remembered what she was here for. It took her two tries to smash the bot, but once the deed was done, the pieces were in the air and bubbled before they could give another sputter.

 

The house was silent after she got back.

She let the tears pool in her eyes until her vision distorted and shimmered. Sometimes that was how everything felt: yes, this world could be beautiful, but its lines were out of place, like stained glass that had fallen from its window.

She found the notebook safe in her room, and she settled onto the couch to begin writing. She wanted to keep an eye on the other gems when they returned, and besides, it didn't feel right to talk to Rose from the seclusion of her room when her memories took place elsewhere. 

_Rose_ , she began. _It's getting harder to think of you as gone, now that our memories are coming back to haunt us_. She gave Rose an account of the holograms. _You'd hate the spheres, Rose! All invasive and skittery, like tiny, infuriating insects. Makes me shudder just to think of them_. She smiled then, knowing exactly how Rose would've responded. Rose saw the good in everything, even bugs that slid their legs along your arms and got into the house when they clearly belonged outside, in the dirt and plants and...wherever bugs do their business. From time to time, Pearl used to get frustrated with Rose’s unshakeable sense of beauty, but now she just missed it. It was only after Rose was gone that she tried to take her advice to heart, and now she wasn't around to see her progress. 

Pearl turned her thoughts to her own memories of before the war. Peridot's minions weren't the only ones who could remember, Pearl realized in a burst of triumph. She remembered plenty, and if those nasty things were going to make her think about pain, she was going to bring out the good stuff.

_Do you remember how you let me into your room one time after training? Of course you do; we made some excellent progress that day, if I may say so myself! We were fighting side-by-side, in-sync and beautifully matched. I even let you protect me with your shield_.

She paused, remembering the glow in her beloved gem's face when they'd finished the training session, Pearl crouching low behind the pink barrier. She'd smirked up at her then, and Rose banished the shield and scooped her up in her arms to plant a kiss on her forehead.

_Rose_ , Pearl asked, wishing with an ache in her chest that she could hear the answer. _Why didn't you want me to take damage for you? I'm a gem. I can come back, and you knew that. I got good at creating my forms quickly just so I could battle for you, yet..._

She momentarily recalled the memory from earlier, when Rose had said she held onto her rules too tightly for her own good.

She shook off the thought. Rose _did_ want all of her, even when she was difficult to deal with! That's what made her so perfect, so loving. It was spending time with Greg that had made her turn on her friends. 

But Pearl trusted Rose's voice above all others, even if she spoke through the thick of a hologram. If Rose really thought Pearl took to extremes, it was something she'd have to consider. 

She closed the notebook and laid the pen on top before walking to the door that led to the temple. She reached a finger to Rose's gem, but before she could touch it, the door opened, and Steven walked out, his hands in his pockets, the air coming from the room smelling faintly of Rose's perfume.


	3. Small Steps

"Steven!" Pearl exclaimed. "What were you doing—" She stopped. It was technically his room, after all. 

"I found this!" Steven pulled out the remains of a holo-sphere and bubbled it. "Guess I should've done that earlier," he added sheepishly. “What is it? A corrupted gem? I know they're evil, but...”

"Steven! How did you..." Pearl put her hand to her mouth. It wasn't enough that they disturbed the peace. Now they were in Rose's room? That was too much.

"I sat on it!" Steven said with a giggle. She glanced at him warily. He seemed much too unperturbed to have just fought a hologram. She wondered who he'd seen: his mother, perhaps? Maybe it was a happy memory. Maybe it looked like a part of Rose's room, tucked into the backdrop. 

"You...sat...on it."

"Yeah! I summoned my shield and smashed it, and since I didn't know what to do after that, I just...sat on the shield." Pearl resisted the urge to reprimand him and temporarily adopted Garnet's policy of undeserved encouragement.

"Well. Good work, I suppose." She looked behind him into Rose's room. "Steven, do you think I could..." She craned her neck to get a better look at the soft pink clouds. 

"Do you want to go inside?" Pearl nodded, taking a few steps forward. "A-Alright! That's fine! Just be careful!" Pearl didn't register Steven's words until she was a few steps inside the room.

"'Be careful?'" She laughed. "Steven, I've been in here hundreds of times. I probably know how it works better than you!" _Yes_ , she thought, squeezing her hands into fists and shaking them in her excitement. _This is a place I know...intimately._

She fell onto one of the clouds and propped herself on her elbows. She listened for the scuttle of a sphere and smiled at the silence that covered the room like a shield.

She rolled onto her back, settling comfortably into the padding. The room remembered her, she sensed, and she closed her eyes, hoping to forget entirely that she was alone. The experience was overwhelming, but happily so; lying in the pink fluff felt like confidence and whispered confessions and love. 

That is to say, it felt like lying in Rose's hair.

Pearl hadn't tried sleeping before. It seemed unnecessary and a bit inconvenient (though she did value the time it gave her to appreciate Rose's features). In the lull of reality and memory mixing so harmoniously, however, she might be able to relax. 

She closed her eyes and let out a small sigh. Maybe it would do her some good to give dreaming a try.

 

_"Pearl, you look frozen! Why aren't you in your room?" She stood with her arms wrapped around her, the shivers jolting through her as though there were demons in her body, laughing. And why wouldn't they laugh? She was nothing, imperfect. So irrevocably defective that words would sometimes dance away from her and jeer from the unreachable parts of her mind._

_"My Pearl," Rose said softly, her voice between a thought and a whisper but somehow with the comfort of a tight hug. "Can you talk, my love?"_

_Pearl looked into her eyes and shook her head._

_"Then you'll just have to rest in my room. Come." She opened her door and waved the smaller gem in with a wink._

A part of Pearl, conscious she was dreaming, smiled in her sleep. "So dreams are just memories!" She thought to herself. "Why would Steven be afraid of something he already knew the ending to?"

_Pearl smiled at Rose, warmth seeping back into her fingers at her kindness, her understanding. With Rose, she didn't have to talk._

_She looked past the doorway and found the room crawling with spheres._

Pearl shifted in her sleep, an uncomfortable weight settling onto her chest. The parts of her mind that gave her consciousness were scared now, scampering to lighter places in a room that was quickly growing dark.

The dream shifted.

_She was on the beach. Sand, night sky, stars – there was grit between her fingers; she tried to brush it away, her hand movements faint – the hard scrape of Rose coaxing sharpness into her sword – Amethyst and Garnet summoning their weapons and dismissing them, powerful, fluid –_

_The ground fell apart in chunks and Pearl leapt from the sand._

Pearl woke up to the sickening beeps of a bot resting just below her neck, scanning her. She flinched, the recoil sending the bot the floor; she destroyed it instinctively. The memory of the dream flickered in her mind, not fading, just relocating to where it wouldn't hurt as much. She was cold, a little hollow. Strange, she thought. Humans liked to talk about dreams filling them up and leading them to magnificent places, but this had taken some of her hope with it and cackled, waving it like a war flag. 

 

Back on the couch, Pearl hugged the notebook to her chest, the feel of the cover digging into her shirt comforting. Something was nagging at her, and she pressed the book more firmly against her heart as if the pressure would give her the answer.

Eventually, she let out a breath and flipped past the cover to the next untouched page. Even the paper felt cool and comfortable to the touch, as if Rose had taken all her sensory issues into account. She smiled internally. Rose had always treated her sensory needs with care, letting her play with her hair and squeeze her hand whenever she needed. And her hugs! They were a perfect mix of breathlessness and warmth, softness and solidity, an entire world Pearl could get lost in...

Pearl shook the blush from her cheeks and recounted the dream. 

_There was something it wanted, certainly. If we knew the specific purposes of the bots, I'd be able to pin down their motives much more clearly. I need more information, as always._

She paused.

 _What was it you always used to say? The one about how I was like a collector. I gathered all the information I could, you said. And then I would spend as much time organizing as I did helping you with whatever mission we were on. I'd like to think I was a great help, but maybe you were right. I spent so much time preparing that you were done before I could even get started._

Tears pricked at the corners of Pearl's eyes.

_Maybe that’s why I never really got to know you._

But before Pearl could fall into a spiral of self-doubt, a few pieces of the puzzle shivered their way into place. She took in a breath sharply and pressed her free hand firmly on the page.

_Rose! What if that's what they need? Our information! And, well, they learned I was the place to go for that._

Pearl tapped the spine of the journal impatiently as she waited for the rest of her idea to come to her. 

_If—and we must make an assumption here—the bots manipulated my thoughts while I slept, they went right where they were programmed to. Rose, they want to know how we fight!_

The glow of having figured out the bots' motives faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by the horror of the facts. The bots were collecting data on fighting styles—their fighting styles—so that when the Homeworld gems got their probes back, they'd know their enemy’s weaknesses. 

Pearl swallowed. Without a plan, they'd be crushed in a heartbeat. 

 

Pearl perked up when she heard the warp pad activate. 

"Garnet!" she called, closing the notebook. "I know something about the bots, and we must discuss it immediate—" 

Steven was on the pad, blinking back at her with the barely contained enthusiasm of a seagull about to devour an abandoned serving of fry bits. 

"—ly," she finished. 

"Is there a super important gem mission I should know about?" He adopted an army pose. "Serious Steven, reporting for duty! No, wait, regular Steven’s better."

"No no, of course not, Steven! Nothing big and threatening to worry abou—"

"Pearl." 

Irritation flashed over her, then relief. It was hard for her, sometimes, to fix how she treated people, even when she knew they’d changed. Pearl was starting to see Steven's brightness as less of a by-product of his youth and more of a strength, a willingness to stay happy that ran deeper than his fear. Still, her instinct was to keep him away from danger.

She nodded and took a deferential step back. 

"Steven needs to know, and we're telling him. Now." Garnet sat on the edge of the warp pad.

The air was still for a few seconds. 

"Can I get a snack first?" Steven asked. Pearl cracked a smile and Garnet stood back up, adjusting her visor.

"Of course, Steven."

 

Once everyone had gotten settled, Steven and Amethyst sharing a bag of chips, Pearl wrinkling her nose with every other crunch, and Garnet simultaneously looking at all of them, the meeting began.

We should just ask Peridot!" Steven said between bites. "She would know."

Pearl winced at the suggestion.

"He's got a point," Amethyst added, looking over at Garnet. "Peridot's _def_ initely behind this whole shebang. We find her, we know." 

This was a little too much for Pearl. Discussing Steven’s suggestions was simply a way to teach him that he couldn’t go with his instincts all the time, but if he heard too much of this nonsense from Amethyst, he might forget everything Pearl had taught him.

"That's much too dangerous," she cut in, "seeking out an unpredictable, technology-crazed lunatic like her! We need to figure out another way."

"Man, Pearl, you're just scared." 

"I'm not scared! I'm _practical_ ," she hissed. "A word I suggest you familiarize yourself with before the day is out."

"If that'll make me anything like you, I'll pass." She folded her arms behind her head and closed her eyes. "Steven, throw me a chip, will you?" She opened her mouth in anticipation of the snack, pointedly ignoring Pearl’s glare. 

Garnet broke up the fight with a simple knock of her knuckles together. 

"I have a solution." The others looked at her, and Amethyst opened her eyes. "Pearl, you're right that confronting the enemy would be risky." 

Pearl straightened her posture.

"But Steven and Amethyst have a point: Peridot has the answers, and if we get close enough, we'll have them too. I don't like the concept of spying—"

Amethyst grinned. "I _love_ spying!" She stage-whispered to Steven. "Keeps me in top shape."

"—but it can be useful sometimes."

"Yeah!" Amethyst tucked the bag of chips under one arm and Steven under the other. "Let's go pack, you knucklehead."

"Wait!" He wriggled free and landed on the floor. "What am I gonna tell Connie?"

Pearl closed her eyes and started running through the possible outcomes in her head.

"Pearl?"

She looked down. Steven was looking up at her, his eyes filled with earnest concern. 

"Tell her..."

_"And you'll tell me whenever anything goes wrong, my Pearl?" Of course she would. Snug in Rose's room, her clouds, her love, Pearl would've promised anything. She extended her hands and met her palms with Rose's._

_"Of course."_

"Tell her that something is wrong and you're just going to fix it. Say you'll be back soon. Because you will."

Steven gave her a quick hug before catching up with Amethyst. 

"Thanks, Pearl!" He called from the banister, but she barely heard him.

"And say that you love her," she added, her voice low and certain. It was exasperating, how similar Steven was to Rose without being Rose herself, but something had changed over the past few days. It was easier, just slightly, to listen to herself. And admitting that her own grief was far from over felt like a lock had let go of itself, like a sunset was finally falling into bloom.


End file.
